PMQs this afternoon was expected to be dominated by the economy. However, the strongest barbs sent towards David Cameron were instead on the NHS and at Cameron himself. This is unsurprising, given recent polling. As long as Cameron and his party are reassured that public opinion on the debt is resilient, there is little reason for them to fear attacks in PMQs, and so it proved.

Nia Griffith started strongly with an attack on youth unemployment, but Cameron brushed it off with a dig at Labour’s reliance on the public sector, a favourite line of attack. Eleanor Laing followed with the traditional hint of surrealism that regularly accompanies PMQs, quoting Robert Burns and allowing Cameron to attack the SNP’s Alex Salmond as a ‘wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie’ which made this correspondent snigger untowardly.

The Commons is full of beasties, though few would call them cowran or tim’rous. Ed Miliband at his best when he soothes them with calm words, and so it proved. Cameron’s ability to rouse his rabble comes across poorly when contrasted with Miliband’s quiet reasonableness. However, he landed few killer blows when pursuing Cameron on the economy, despite the raucous delight on the Labour benches. Ed Balls had briefed that Labour was expecting Cameron to ‘bluster’. Yet in fact the two men were well matched: Miliband challenged Cameron on his party’s promises of steady sustained growth, but Cameron responded with a barb on Brown’s promise to end ‘boom and bust’ (though he might have been better advised not to credit Labour, as he did, with ‘delivering boom’ as well as bust).

Where Miliband’s blows were stronger was on Cameron’s demeanour. He referred to Cameron’s ‘excuses,’ to his ‘smug complacency,’ to his ‘total arrogance,’ and, in a particular favourite of this correspondent, rolled them all together to call Cameron and his ministers ‘a byword for self-satisfied, arrogant complacency’. This is an accusation that resonates even with Cameron’s supporters – polling shows Cameron’s rating on ‘being in touch with ordinary people’ to be sliding into single figures.

Other blows were landed on NHS reforms. Cameron evaded the questions, made a poor gag about the NHS being full of second opinions, and at one stage cited the opinions of a GP in Doncaster, presumably to try to paint Miliband as being out of touch with his own constituency. Sadly it came across as if he’d asked absolutely everyone else and a random doctor in a town in Yorkshire was the only person he could find to agree with him, which in fairness is pretty much the truth of the matter. This is clearly a vulnerable area for Cameron and one that Miliband should pursue.

Weaker moments for Labour came on benefit reforms, where Cameron went on the attack against Labour both on the party’s alleged hypocrisy and on the popularity among the public of welfare reform, and this was boosted by some carefully framed questions from Conservative backbenchers (and some barely parliamentary language).

Overall, then, the day was a rout for neither leader and there will be no one-liners taken for headlines (unless it’s one of Robert Burns’). Miliband was strong but not spellbinding; Cameron was resilient but not overwhelmingly dominant. The vulnerabilities for both parties were exposed: Cameron’s on the NHS and Labour’s on welfare spending, which is a deeply emotive subject for its own members and activists. But the most telling point might be the personal digs at Cameron for smugness and arrogance, clearly a weak spot for the old Etonian, and it’s likely that this will be an ongoing theme.

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Carina O’Reilly is a councillor in Cambridge